THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 10, 1996 TAG: 9610100321
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON FRANK, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 96 lines
Officials are expected to announce this morning that Nauticus will host the first exhibition of Titanic artifacts collected by a team of entrepreneurial adventurers this summer while thousands watched from two cruise ships in the North Atlantic.
An 11 a.m. news conference announcing the exhibition has been scheduled at Nauticus.
Expected to be highlighted are some of the 29 items recovered in August when a team led by George Tulloch, a former Connecticut car dealer, took three submersible craft 2 1/2 miles down to the site of the 1912 Titanic disaster.
The artifacts include a Marconi ship telegraph, a large silver soup tureen dented during its descent to the ocean floor 84 years ago, and numerous pieces of glass and crystal bearing the distinctive pennant of the White Star Line, under which the Titanic sailed.
As successful as the monthlong expedition was, it could have been much better, Tulloch admitted on Wednesday after a hearing in U.S. District Court on the progress of the expedition.
Tulloch, who leads the group that conducted the expedition, said it failed in what many considered its main goal: to raise a section of the Titanic's cabin to the surface for eventual display on land.
Most disappointing was that Tulloch almost did it. On Aug. 30, the 20-ton section of two first-class cabins was only 200 feet below the surface after being floated from the ocean floor by balloons filled with fuel.
Then support lines began snapping in rough seas. As Tulloch and his team watched in horror, the cabin section sank again.
``It was a tremendous sense of failure,'' Tulloch said Wednesday. ``A very hollow, painful feeling of failure.''
Fortunately, for the future of the wreck site and the cabin section of the Titanic brought to the surface, ``it actually made a soft landing,'' Brad Stillman, Tulloch's attorney, said in court Wednesday.
Once it was back on the ocean floor, the cabin section was decorated with a sign by crew members. It says: ``I will come back - George Tulloch.''
Television viewers will be able to see dramatic footage of the expedition this Sunday when the Discovery Channel airs the first of two documentaries - ``Titanic: The Investigation Begins'' - filmed in the North Atlantic this summer. Another two-hour documentary - ``Titanic: Anatomy of a Disaster'' - will be shown next April on the Discovery Channel.
Wednesday's hearing was held to bring U.S. District Judge J. Calvitt Clarke Jr. up to date on the expedition. Clarke made it possible by upholding Tulloch's right to be sole salvor of the Titanic wreck site.
Clarke ruled in August that the salvage rights of RMS Titanic - Tulloch's company - included the right to be the sole documentarian of the expedition. Clarke's ruling forced NBC to cancel plans to film the expedition and the wreck site.
``Thanks to the finding of the court, we didn't have to worry about other people peeking over the fence,'' Tulloch said Wednesday.
The ruling also allowed Tulloch to market and finance his Titanic expedition, the fourth he has organized, like no other before.
Two cruise ships, the Royal Majesty and the Island Breeze, sailed out of Boston and New York. About 1,700 passengers paid from $1,800 to $6,950 each for the privilege of watching the Titanic excavation up close.
The ships spent three days each at the site, and passengers were able to watch live television feeds from the ocean floor as the wreck site was investigated by Tulloch's three submersibles.
The underwater filming, Tulloch said Wednesday, was a highlight of the expedition because it was unlike any filming ever done before at the Titanic site. Enormous light towers were erected on the ocean floor, allowing unprecedented views of the milelong wreck site.
``It provided almost a cathedral-like look,'' Tulloch said on Wednesday. ``It provided a whole different perspective to life in the deep ocean.''
Tulloch has been fighting for 10 years for rights to the Titanic, which sank on its maiden voyage on April 15, 1912, and took the lives of 1,500 passengers. He has fought off a film producer, a Memphis treasure hunter and a Texas oilman. During his previous expeditions to the Titanic site, he has collected 785 items and made 18 dives.
Despite his victory, Tulloch's efforts have been criticized for being crassly commercial. For example, chunks of coal from the site have been sold as souvenirs, ostensibly to help finance the historical and scientific research.
Stillman, Tulloch's attorney, said those discoveries have been numerous. Analysis of ``rusticles'' hanging from the Titanic should help scientists learn how nature causes metals to disintegrate. And analysis of the ship's metal brought back by the salvors may help explain how the Titanic sank.
Also, Stillman said, Tulloch's expedition was able to solve another riddle that has long perplexed those interested in the Titanic disaster.
On the night the Titanic sank, the ship California was nearby. Historians have always wondered whether those on the California could see the distress flares sent up by the Titanic during the 2 hours and 20 minutes it took for the Titanic to sink.
A re-enactment of the firing of the flares during the expedition, Stillman said, proved that the California would have seen the flares.
``This was all part of the presentation made to the passengers on the cruise ships,'' Stillman said. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/The Virginian-Pilot
Attorney Brad Stillman holds one of the Titanic artifacts. A news
conference on the Nauticus display will be today. by CNB